Contents

Plot

Mononoke follows a wandering, nameless character known only as the "Medicine Seller" (voiced by Takahiro Sakurai). The series is made up of individual chapters in which the medicine seller encounters, combats and subsequently destroys various mononoke. The "mononoke" are a type of ayakashi, unnatural spirits that linger in the human world.

The Medicine Seller always proceeds in the same manner, using his knowledge of the supernatural to fend off the mononoke until he can learn the spirit's shape (Katachi), truth (Makoto) and reasoning (Kotowari). Only then can he unsheathe his sword and exorcise the demon.

Story arcs

Zashiki-warashi 座敷童子

Episodes: 1-2

While spending the night in a traditional inn, the Medicine Seller stumbles upon a strange phenomenon. A pregnant woman named Shino who is desperately seeking shelter at the inn is led to the last vacant room. The room, though, is haunted by a group of Zashiki Warashi. When the Zashiki Warashi kill an assassin aiming for Shino's life, protecting Shino and her unborn child, the Medicine Seller inquires into the origin of the mononoke.

The innkeeper reveals that the inn used to be a brothel, which she owned & ran. The innkeeper forced her prostitutes to abort their children so that they could continue working; eventually, she reserved Shino's room as an offering to the unborn children. The Medicine Seller realizes that the mononoke are attracted to Shino because of their strong desire to be born. The Zashiki Warashi want Shino to give birth to them, and she agrees, much to the Medicine Seller's dismay. She pulls the talisman warding off the mononoke off her stomach. However, the Zashiki Warashi, seeing the love that Shino has for her child, accept that Shino is physically able to only give birth to her own child, and vanish.

At the end of the episode, the Medicine Seller seems to have saved both Shino and her child since she is seen with a big belly, knocked out on the floor. However, some speculate that the final scene after the ending credits implies that the child she is about to give birth to is in fact the Mononoke, having taken the place of her own miscarried child.

Umibōzu 海坊主

Episodes 3-5

Traveling on a merchant's luxurious ship, the Medicine Seller and the ship's other passengers drift into the Dragon's Triangle, a mysterious sea full of ayakashi. Among the passengers are Kayo, a servant girl from the Sakai house of Bakeneko fame, and Genyousai, a minstrel and spiritualist. Through the appearance of Umizatou, an ayakashi who demands that the passengers reveal their worst fears, the group discovers that Genkei was the one who set the ship off course. Genkei explains that it was the hatred of his late sister Oyou that attracted the ayakashi and created the Dragon's Triangle—Oyou took Genkei's place in an utsurobune, a ship made from a hollowed log, and set sail as a sacrifice to appease the ayakashi. The Medicine Seller discovers that Genkei is in fact responsible for attracting the ayakashi; unable to accept that he had been joyful rather than guilty when his sister took his place, Genkei had allowed his darker emotions to separate from him in the form of a mononoke. The Medicine Seller exterminates the mononoke at Genkei's request and restores calm to the Dragon's Triangle.

Noppera-bō のっぺらぼう

Episodes 6-7

A despairing woman named Ochou, wishing for freedom but unable to escape her oppression, confesses to killing her husband's entire family. The Medicine Seller doubts this story and visits Ochou in her prison cell to ask her for the truth, but encounters a mononoke in a Noh mask who fights the Medicine Seller and allows Ochou to escape. The man in the Noh mask convinces Ochou that he has given her freedom by helping her kill her family, but the Medicine Seller pursues the two and reveals to Ochou that she had killed not her husband's family, but herself. Ochou married into a good family as her mother wished, but to her desire to please her mother, withstood abuse from her new family to the point of forsaking any happiness she could have gained from her life. When Ochou realizes this, the man in the Noh mask vanishes, and Ochou finds herself in her kitchen. It is implied that the man in the Noh mask was an illusion conjured by the Medicine Seller to help Ochou escape—at the end of the episode, Ochou ignores her husband's orders and leaves her family, gaining the freedom she had long desired.

Nue 鵺

Episodes 8-9

Three men seeking to marry Lady Ruri, the sole heir to the Fuenokouji school of incense, arrive at Lady Ruri's mansion to participate in a competition of incense only to find that the fourth suitor is missing and that the Medicine Seller has taken his place. During the competition, Lady Ruri is murdered. When the Medicine Seller inquires as to why the three suitors are so desperate to inherit the school even after Lady Ruri's death, the suitors reveal that the competition is not actually over the school of incense, but the Toudaiji, a piece of wood rumored to grant its owner great power.

Although Medicine Seller presides over a second incense contest, none of the three suitors win the Toudaiji, as all three are killed. The Medicine Seller then asks the Toudaiji, the true mononoke, to reveal itself. The Toudaiji draws its sense of self-esteem from the fact that people value it so highly, yet in truth, it is nothing but a rotting piece of wood. The Toudaiji kills those who seek it, including Lady Ruri's suitors, perpetuating the bloodshed for its sake. The Medicine Seller destroys the Toudaiji, appeasing the souls of its victims, including Lady Ruri's suitors.

Bakeneko 化猫

Episodes 10-12

Set in a time period decidedly later than the previous arcs—implied to be in the 1920s—the Medicine Seller boards a train with several other passengers. Unfortunately, the train hits a ghostly girl on the tracks, and six passengers and the Medicine Seller are locked in the first car. The Medicine Seller questions the passengers to reveal a dark connection between them, shedding light on the murder of a young, female newspaper reporter. At the end of the episode the woman's spirit has its revenge, the passengers are saved, and the Medicine Seller challenges the audience to reveal to him their Truth and Reason, vowing to continue hunting Mononoke as long as they roam the world.

Reception

The directing and art have been called "boldly confrontational."[1] It seamlessly blends a murder mystery structure with "twist of supernatural and a shake of historical, peppered with plenty of stylistic experimentation." It frequently achieves "the ideal - great directing combined with great animation." [1] The Mainichi newspaper said it could not be dismissed as a mere experiment, and that the story's themes were every bit as advanced as the digital animation techniques employed.[2]